Face It, Progs: Obama’s a Dud

Rachel Maddow, on the other hand, appears to be a keeper. In the clip below, she explains how President Obama, principled opponent of prosecuting or even investigating past crimes, plans to lock people up for future crimes. Forever.

To be fair, that is literally progressive.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uuWVHT1WUY[/youtube]

Skulz Fontaine

“The evidence may be tainted.” Wow, really? Give the Guantanamo detainees ‘due process’. Or let them go. Obama is beyond “dud.” Obama is one bitter disappointment.

liberranter

The correct title to this piece should read “Admit it, Progs: Obama is a Fraud, Always Has Been, and ALL OF YOU KNEW IT ALL ALONG!”

Dale A. Sender

Dud, no, the word I had in mind starts with a ‘P’ and refers to the male genitalia.

what a complete, utter, shameless NEOCON this jerk is. he truly is.

I feel so sorry for you schmucks who drank the kool-aid and voted for his ass.

thanks for nothing, suckers!

we’re really a dictatorship now. no more hemming and hawing. we are. the republic is over.

MoT

I agree but the republic was “over” before him, before Bush, Clinton, Bush Sr. etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum and on and on and on. Long before most of us were born. Any residual echoes you may hear from its long dead heartbeat are fading quickly and are merely a powerless reminder.

Brian

Tried to give the liberals and progressives a headsup that this guy was a total fake but hey it goes to show that the “conservatives” and “liberals” are both willing idiots.

Bill Rood

Yes, she certainly is a keeper. Principled progressives like Rachel Maddow and Dennis Kucinich have far more in common with libertarians and traditional conservatives like antiwar.com and Ron Paul than such real progressives, libertarians or Taft conservatives have with “centrist” Democrats or Republicans.

It drives me crazy that people like Ron Paul or even Walter Jones on the one hand, and Kucinich, Conyers and Lee on the other, don’t form a “Constitutional principles” caucus that could eventually develop into a true opposition party.

With Obama, DLC and national security Democrats firmly in control of the center, and the Republican Party continuing to marginalize itself trying to justify torture of all things, and criticizing Obama for things they themselves did for 8 years, we are in for a period of one party rule until principled progressives, libertarians traditional conservatives get their act together in opposition.

The opposition to Empire needs to bury its differences over labor, health care, education, Social Security etc and unite under a big tent in opposition to Empire, military adventurism, unbridled executive power, Constitutional violations and bailouts to banksters. It’s the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex and the banksters who are bankrupting the US. Until we bring it under control, there will never be true economic security or any other kind of security for the American people.

Brad Smith

Well it would be nice to have a second party in Washington. It would need to start with the premise of limiting government, otherwise you won’t have a chance building a “big tent”.

Peace!

Bill

Many of the issues that separate progressives from libertarians can be devolved to the states. For example, if the Federal Government would just get out of the way and allow individual states to spend health care money as they see fit, we might see 52 different experiments as to which system works best. Same with labor relations. We already allow states to decide whether they will allow closed shops. Why not allow states to decide whether or not to allow card check? For years conservatives have been saying we should abolish the Department of Education. Now that progressives have had a taste of NCLB, maybe they’ll see the light.

All of the above would reduce the size of the Federal Government, but of course the major way to reduce the size of the Federal Government is to seriously reduce military spending, which is half the discretionary budget.

Brad Smith

Sounds like a good plan, at least for the Federal level. As for individual states I would still fight for less govenment there as well. But to each their own and if anyone still wants to fight for a larger role for State Governments thats up to them. I am no Statist and don’t really believe the govenment is much good for anything, so the less the better.

I agree that reducing the military needs to happen and happen soon.

Peace!

acudoc

Well stated!

In my opinion, all the present excesses in the economy, all of our wars, all of the assaults on personal liberty, all of the myriad social programs creating a grotesque dependency of the citizenry of the United States on government largesse, are directly linked to a kind of state-worship of central government power conditioned by propaganda in public schools and media, and such power is directly enabled and supported by a central banking cartel that has absolute control over a fiat paper money system that creates money only by monetizing the debt of individuals and productive enterprises in the United States, and indeed throughout the world. We are mired in debt, and hence we have become serfs.

When you see this fact clearly, all but a few of our politicians are revealed for the buffoons that they are…and the bankers for craven parasites. I hate to be so negative but I am forced to this conclusion by the simple act of stepping outside the matrix after 911.

Andy

Where’s the “change”?

Brad Smith

I get a kick out of it everytime I hear someone saying the Republicans do this and the Democrats do that. The system is a farce, a joke and a sham. We have one party the Republicrat, Facist, Socialist, Party. Or Reptilians if you prefer (the more I hear Reptilian the more it seems to fit).

Bill, labor legislation, government involvement in health care and education, and Social Security are ALL Constitutional violations (the 10th amendment for starters). So make up your mind. Do you really want them to oppose ALL Constitutional violations, or just the ones you don’t personally like?

Durant

Don’t blame me. I voted for Nader. Obama admitted what he was in the campaign but everyone was so infatuated they didn’t listen. Clinton would be worse but since the Administration is full of Clintonista’s not by much.

Dick Cheney’s Third Term being explained by someone who is intelligible. Amazingly Obama is as delusional as Cheney. The military thugs run the White House and seduced him to the dark side over lunch in the Navy’s mess in the West Wing. Yeh, that must be it.

“Dick Cheneyâ€™s Third Term ” Ha, I like that. You would have thought people would have woken up when Cheney started applauding certain things that Obama did. I mean, if Cheney likes it, it can’t be good.

MoT

Don’t blame me. I didn’t vote at all. Why bother choosing between boot-in-the-face Totalitarianism or Have-a-nice-day Socialism (I forget which starts and the other begins because they’re one & the same) with a side order of knife-in-the-back false promises… i.e. LIES. The fact that anyone believes anything from these liars, and fellow aparatchiks who participate in their own serfdom, is proof that most people are just out and out stupid. Carry on believing that the next staged election “cycle” will change things. It won’t! The phony debates and hand wringing will continue until the bank is run dry and you’re all baying at the moon!

Ali

Unbelievable! A legal framework for keeping people in detention, forever! I hate to pour salt on your wounds, but here in Iran, according to the law, every detainee must be charged with a crime within 48 hours or something like that or be set free, or he must appear before a judge where the judge can extend the detention to couple of months or set the detainee free if there is not enough evidence to justify keeping him detained. After that the detainee must be set free or charged with a crime and a court date set. That happens in 99.99 percent of the cases, with some small exceptions which again the general outline above is observed. But, America will soon have “legitimate laws” to keep people in detention forever. There are others in the world who wish to do just that, but at least they never have, and will not “construct” “legitimate laws” for that.

Lear K

Finally the US starting to learn something from those evil dictators that it so often fond of overthrowing ,or killing.

Fan of Raimondo and Garris

I call myself a liberal rather than a progressive, but I spotted Obama as a cookie-cutter, polished, PHONY politician the first time I saw him in a televised interview. This was shortly after he announced his candidacy for president. What I noticed during the campaign was that he never took a firm stand on principle, but always took the path of least resistance. I am angered–but not surprised–by how he has emulated George W. Bush since becoming the new emperor.

The regular contributors to antiwar.com show that not all conservatives are like Dick Cheney. Rachel Maddow and Glen Greenwald show that not all “progressives” are like Barack Obama Bush.

olbe

Anyone who didn’t see Obama as total phony from the get-go should be very alarmed about their people-evaluating skils.

paulite

Obama is just another establishment puppet who doesn’t have the knowledge or power to change anything. His daily TV appearances won’t work. If anything, they are turning people off because what he says one day is not what he says the next.

We are in for a rocky four years, for sure.

bryant

If you realize he is a puppet, why the “four years” comment? There will be other puppets after him; so long as the master believes they are useful.

Carol Watson

My devout liberal/progressive friends, each time they see another awful Obama decision, chant in unison: “Give him a chance! Give him a chance! He’s only been in the White House a few months!”

That has to be the scariest thing I have heard yet. Fortunately, the chant has less and less chantees as each day goes by. Obama’s choir is winding down, albeit slowly.

Go Rachel! btw, here in Australia, the anti-terror laws allow someone to be detained for 48 hours without charge. I think regular police can detain one for 4 hours without charge. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation can hold suspects for up to 14 days under a warrant issued by a federal judge. And can you believe that many Aussies thought all of that was over the top.

I really hope ppl stop thinking Obama is different to other presidents/politicians.

Teri

“allow individual states to spend health care money as they see fit, we might see 52 different experiments as to which system works best.”

Absolutely. The health care industry may buy federal legislators, but they know better than to try to buy a state legislator.

MoT

Surely you meant this tongue in cheek. C’mon… fess up!

Tim Harrington

Exactly how are those who might be released due to a lack of evidence of PRIOR crimes going to be a more grave danger than all those other, growing numbers of people out in the world who are plotting to harm us anyway – in many cases precisely because of such policies as “prolonged detention”? After years in Gitmo, these guys are somehow better prepared to do FUTURE harm? It is ridiculous.

More than ridiculous is the use of such GOP-ish fear mongering to continue unconstitutional, illegal and immoral policies. The kabuki dance of modern American politics is enough to make one yearn for the good old days – the days of Stalin and Hitler. At least the wolves then did not waste time wearing sheep’s clothing.

A lawyer will dance to the tune of the client.
When you voted ,you thought it was a democracy.
Now, you know better, to your chagrin.
“So many lawyers; so little rope”.

Owen

The comments above about dismantling the federal government and relegating all its entitlement promises and everything else to the states is what is going to have to happen if we are ever going to see this tide of growing tyrrany reversed. I am fairly confident a great majority of those who will read this comment are anti-war just like I am, but it saddens me that those same folks do not see the dangers and immorality of the welfare state.
I supported Ron Paul, so I will say it. I told you so!

Unfortunately, it could be too late to say “I told you so”. Between the Clintonion minions, the Bushwhackers regimes and now the Obamaites all making an abomination of our Constitution, the greed of corporate Wall Street, the thievery of the Fed bent on bankrupting our country, the (mostly) lying media, our bought and paid-for, spineless republican and democratic congressional representatives, and the millions of brain-dead constituents, I fear our future may already be DOA. At this point, the only thing that will change anything is a bonified miracle of the highest kind. It’s a sad , sad time for America.

First things first this will only affect a small number of people. Obama’s is trying to clean up the mess that Bush created. This puts him in the difficult position of having bona-fide terrorists languishing in Guantanamo who can never be legally prosecuted because their rights have been so violated that any defense lawyer worth his salt can get the case dismissed. Politically this is a nightmare; releasing these people will created a potential security disaster because it is almost guaranteed they will go out and commit acts of terrorism. Rachel’s hyperbole aside this is not fear mongering at work here. Can you imagine the political fallout if Obama releases a guy and he blows something up a year later?

Also one of things that makes this a marked departure from the Bush’s tactics of shadow government is that this is will be done transparently. Rachel mis-quoted when she said this will be done outside the courts. He specifically stated this will be done with Court and Congressional oversight. Why is this important? Because then the decision will not fall on a small group of people with no oversight(as it was done under Bush). Judges and members of Congress will have to approve each of these detentions and the consequences will fall on their shoulders as well. It will also not be a permanent thing; he stated specifically there will be periodic review.

While I am liberally minded I am also a realist. Obama faces a tough choice; release known terrorists and expose this country to further attacks? Or try to mitigate the potential threat while still adhering to our political ideals? I would only imagine that after the end of this process only a few dozen detainees will fall under this category. And they will no longer be anonymous people and their dispositions and actions will be well documented.

He’s already pledge to pursue any other terrorist found under our current legal system. But that doesn’t help him with the people in Guantanamo now.

Read between the lines; this is not Obama destroying the Constitution, this is further proof of just how inept and criminal Bush really was. What people should be asking is how badly did Bush handled the “War on Terror” that we can’t even prosecute the few real Terrorists he manage to find? I can only imagine what his review of the Guantanamo detainees showed.

That is why I am a serious proponent of prosecuting all those responsible for authorizing and allowing Special Rendition, torture, warrantless wiretapping and preventative war. That not only includes the Bush Administration but the Democratic and Republican members of congress who were responsible for oversight. And that is where I am in complete opposition with Obama. We can’t “look forward” until we admit to our past mistakes. And people need to be held accountable for what they did; regardless of their motives. The ends do not justify the means.

Now you know why Polosi said “Impeachment is off the table.” She and the rest of the Democratic leadership knew damn well what Bush was doing and were too afraid to do anything. They were more concerned with keeping their positions of power than standing up for our ideals. And the Republicans were too weak and too gun ho to care about the consequences of following that war criminal.

Jag Pop

You BEGAN with:

“First things first this will only affect a small number of people.”

Dead in the water from the getgo.

Clearly you don’t get IT.
And I doubt if you know what IT is.

bryant

Too true, Jag Pop. The “small number” arguers seem to think that they’ll never actually be one of the affected.

That’s what they said about the federal income tax when it was introduced in 1913. At that time, the tax only applied to about the richest one percent of people in the country, and the highest marginal tax rate was 7 percent, applied only to income greater than a million dollars a year (which is equivalent to about 100 million dollars a year in 2009 dollars).

That’s how the income tax was sold to the American people: “This will only affect a small number of people” – it won’t affect you.

Right…

Ibrahim

It wont be long until Obama locks up all those who voted for him. Stalin killed all the old Bolshevics Obama will kill all the old liberals. We need to impeach him now before it is to late.

The treatment of Howard Dean clearly illustrates how this went down. Obama sought out anti-establishment Democrats to support his candidacy. Dean, who brought millions of anti-establishment Democrats into the party and to the polls in 2006 also worked very hard to get Obama in the White House after the convention. And was cast aside.

Why was he cast aside? Because, in part, Obama is an establishment Democrat. Obama took about a third more in defense contractor campaign contributions than McCain did. Obama loves the war, the detention camps, the invasions of civil liberties, but is clever enough not to speak openly about it all the time. Obama wants to protect big government power. So an anti-establishment Democrat like Dean had no place in Obama’s administration.

The other part is that Obama presumably believes that as incumbent in 2012 he’ll have an easier time of re-election. That would only be true if there is not a candidate in the primaries against him with the support that Kennedy had going up against Carter in 1980. I think Dennis Kucinich or Howard Dean could be such a candidate, but if anti-establishment and anti-war Democrats want such a candidate to be effective in 2012, the time to start focusing on one and building him up is now.

For Republicans, libertarians, Boston Tea Party-goers and the like it would be wise to also focus on candidates who are anti-war and anti-big-government to appeal to the betrayed anti-establishment voters. If an anti-establishment coalition got behind a candidate who was truly anti-war, that might be wise.

Incumbents do have an easier time, but this incumbent has major problems. Millions of Americans are out of work and millions more have been forced to work part time, sometimes for the same employer. Major industries are cratering and reorganising. The economy is not likely to support the idea of a re-election strategy. And Obama seems determined to provoke more atrocities abroad and at home with his foreign and domestic policies of intervention and aggression. Look for new attacks on the second amendment, as well as these perfidious attacks on the rest of the bill of rights.

Personally, I’m not convinced that electoral politics, which is the source of so many of our problems, is going to solve them. But I do think it is important to network with people who care about ending the wars, both domestic wars against drugs and terror and foreign wars. Wouldn’t it be nice to end WW2 and bring the troops home from Germany and Japan?

To advocate for human rights, peace, and social justice while ignoring their necessary ecological basis –â€” a stable human population â€“ at, or slightly less than â€“ the eco-systems long term carrying capacity — is intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy.

Very interesting submit. Your current web-site is fairly quickly growing to be certainly one of my top feature. Online Dental Courses

Alexander

It is now August 5th 2011.
Obama has taken many steps to reduce the United States into one BIG ghetto; no doubt he feels a little more at home now.
We have lost our AAA credit rating, he has turned the entire Country into a nation of useless non producing darkies.
Meanwhile he 'worries' while playing golf or shooting baskets.
I have to wonder how far that character will be allowed to pull the United states down before he is given the 'bum's rush' out onto Pennsylvania Avenue.